State approves ballot language for campus gun ban

Group to begin collecting 86,000 signatures needed for measure to go before voters

By Sarah Kuta Camera Staff Writer

Posted:
01/02/2014 08:31:48 PM MST

Updated:
01/02/2014 08:32:18 PM MST

State voters could decide this year whether to ban concealed guns on public college campuses including the University of Colorado.

Safe Campus Colorado, a group supporting gun control measures, can begin collecting the roughly 86,000 signatures needed for a November ballot measure that would ban concealed weapons on public campuses.

Members of the group spoke before Colorado's Initiative Title Setting Review Board, which approved the language for the measure Thursday.

The ballot measure proposal comes after the Colorado Supreme Court struck down the ban on concealed weapons on public campuses in 2012. An attempt by state legislators to reinstate the ban last year failed.

Safe Campus Colorado founder Ken Toltz said it is time to bring the issue to voters.

"I just thought when the Legislature can't get it done, it's up to the citizens to do it," said Toltz, a former University of Denver adjunct professor.

The group has six months to collect the signatures needed for a ballot measure, and Toltz said his group plans to recruit students on public campuses to help get signatures and promote the measure.

If the measure makes it onto the ballot and passes, it would add public colleges and universities to the Concealed Carry Act, a 2003 law that bans concealed weapons at K-12 schools. Right now, Colorado and Utah are the only states that allow concealed weapons on public college campuses.

Advertisement

Ken Bonetti, a CU academic adviser with a sign on his door that reads "Please do not bring guns, concealed or otherwise, into this office," said he was pleased to hear that a concealed gun ban might be on the 2014 ballot.

"I'm very much in favor of that," he said. "I was just saying to a coworker that I plan on being out there circulating petitions. I'm totally behind this effort. I just hope it works."

Bonetti used to have a sign outside his office that read "Absolutely no guns, concealed or otherwise, allowed into this office," but had to tweak the language in 2012 after he said CU administrators threatened to fire him.

He was confident that a ballot measure would pass in Colorado, where some polls have shown that citizens favor tougher gun restrictions, he said.

"When you poll voters, most people want sensible gun control, and most people want guns kept out of places where they don't belong, like schools and courthouses and also private business," Bonetti said. "Campuses are another place where they don't belong."

In 2012, the state Supreme Court struck down CU's gun ban, a move that allowed those with concealed-weapon permits to bring their guns into classrooms and labs on the campus. Guns are banned in dorms and at ticketed events such as football games and concerts.

In 2013, State Rep. Claire Levy, D-Boulder, introduced a bill that would have added higher education buildings to the list of places where Colorado's Concealed Carry Act doesn't apply. After clearing the House and a Senate committee, the bill's co-sponsor Sen. Rollie Heath, D-Boulder, killed the bill, fearing that it didn't have enough votes in the Senate for the bill to pass.

Heath said Thursday he doesn't plan to revive the idea in the legislative term that starts next week.

"We've been there, done that," Heath said.

Though the Boulder Faculty Assembly does not have an official position on concealed weapons on the campus, chairman Paul Chinowsky said most CU faculty members welcome a ballot measure because it will start a much-needed conversation.

"I do think it would be good for it to go up for a vote," Chinowsky said. "Having that discussion at a high level with the voice of the ballot is something we need."

CU English professor Julie Carr, who last year helped author an online petition to reinstate the campus gun ban, said the ballot measure is the logical next step to ban guns on campus.

"As a teacher and as a mother, I'm just really concerned about the growing intensity around the so-called gun-rights population, the people who are arguing in favor of keeping gun laws as lax as possible," said Carr, who has three children. "There's a sense in our culture of a kind of permission around guns and gun violence that has led to a vast increase in numbers of mass shootings and school shootings. In that kind of climate, it's foolish to invite guns onto campus."

Some people questioned the legality of such a ban even if approved by voters.

William Perry Pendley, president of Mountain States Legal Foundation, said he wonders whether a ban, if it passes, would be constitutional.

Mountain States Legal Foundation represented Students for Concealed Carry on Campus, the gun-rights group that filed a lawsuit against CU in 2008 arguing that a university policy banning concealed weapons from its campuses violated state gun laws. That lawsuit eventually made it to the state's highest court, which sided with the gun-rights group.

Pendley said it is too early to talk about whether his firm would consider further legal action if a ballot measure passes.

"When we prevailed at the Colorado Supreme Court, the court did not address the constitutionality of the actions of the CU Board of Regents because they could resolve the matter on statute," Pendley said. "We continue to maintain there's serious questions about whether or not someone could be denied his or her self-defense rights in such a manner."

David Kopel, an attorney at Denver's conservative Independence Institute, helped argue on the side of gun-rights activists in the lawsuit.

He said the campus gun ban has failed in the Legislature for good reason and would fail with voters as well.

"It's important for public safety that people are able to defend themselves on a college campus same as anywhere else," Kopel said.

Local duo joining overseas exhibition excursionFilippo Swartz went to Italy, where his mother was born and he spent the first year or so of his life, every summer until he had to stick around to be a part of summer football activities for the Longmont High School team. Full Story

MacIntyre says the completed project will be best in Pac-12There were bulldozers, hard hats, mud, concrete trucks, blueprints, mud, cranes, lots of noise and, uh, mud, during the last recruiting cycle when Colorado football coach Mike MacIntyre brought recruits to campus. Full Story

Most people don't play guitar like Grayson Erhard does. That's because most people can't play guitar like he does. The guitarist for Fort Collins' Aspen Hourglass often uses a difficult two-hands-on-the-fretboard technique that Eddie Van Halen first popularized but which players such as Erhard have developed beyond pop-rock vulgarity.
Full Story